![]() The first of the film's four movements deals with man's prehistoric debut. His potentially majestic myth about man's first encounter with a higher life form than his own dwindles into a whimsical space operetta, then frantically inflates itself again for a surreal climax in which the imagery is just obscure enough to be annoying, just precise enough to be banal. Somewhere between earth and Jupiter, though, producer-director Stanley Kubrick gets confused about the proper scale of things himself. On the other we have man, a recently risen ex-ape in a dinky little rocket ship. On the one hand we have the universe that takes a pretty big hand. Most of the sporadic power and sly humor of 2001: A Space Odyssey derive from a contrast in scale. But it's also eminently watchable-in some places, like the end of the Dawn of Man sequence or the climactic Stargate ride, even thrilling-and, like many of Kubrick's works, has aged remarkably well.Īs a way to begin the 50th anniversary celebration of 2001: A Space Odyssey, here is Morgenstern's 1968 Newsweek review, originally published under the headline "Kubrick's Cosmos." - Dante A. To be fair, 2001 is a difficult movie: it's pacing can be glacial and its emotional resonance as clinical and cold as the interiors of the spacecraft. Reading the piece today, that line in particular stand out like a sore thumb.) ![]() (Morgenstern also, unfortunately, makes a cringe-worthy dig on the way HAL, the murderous artificial intelligence, interacts with the astronauts. It was an incorrect reading of 2001 then and it feels especially wrong a half century later, especially when it comes to the lobotimization-of-HAL scene. Morgenstern's ironic, dismissive judgment of the film would have you believe that Kubrick's ostentatious, boundaries-pushing ambition-especially when it comes to visual and optical effects and the use of found music, like Strauss's "The Blue Danube" waltz-is merely empty spectacle. Newsweek 's take on the film, written by Joseph Morgenstern and published in the April 15, 1968, issue of the magazine, is representative of the snarky ribbing that greeted 2001. But when it premiered on April 2, 1968, in Washington D.C., it left many critics, industry professionals and members of the moviegoing public perplexed, agitated and bored. ![]() Strangelove, 2001 was one of the most anticipated films of the 1960s. Kubrick's first film after the groundbreaking Dr. ![]() Rightly hailed today as a science-fiction classic and a trailblazing piece of moviemaking, director Stanley Kubrick's cerebral 2001: A Space Odyssey was met with far different reactions after its debut 50 years ago. ![]()
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